WORKSHOP: Can’t We All Get Along? January 21

Join us for Seattle Experimental Theater’s next improv workshop – learn from our veterans as they share their expertise and unique perspectives.

“Can’t We All Get Along” with Tony Beeman will be offered on January 21, 2016 from 1 – 4PM. Spaces are limited and advance registration is required. Class fee is $45. The class is recommended for advanced and intermediate improvisers with at least some performing experience.

Tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets.

CLASS DESCRIPTION

Theatre, literature, cinema and real life are all filled with people who get along. People who fall in love, maintain friendships, help each other out, and build a better society. The same can’t always be said for improvised scenes. Improvised characters spend a lot of time fighting, disagreeing, or betraying each other. It can be hard for improvisers to find tension without reaching for external conflict.

This workshop will explore internal conflict and find different sorts of tensions. We will work with scenes between characters who like each other, who fall in love, and who genuinely want to help. We’ll explore characters who are at war with themselves, not with someone else. We’ll look at off-stage conflict, and how on-stage characters can embody that conflict in interesting ways. We’ll also explore how to create mixed relationships: odd couples, relationships of grudging respect, love/hate relationships, and characters who fall in love with the worst possible choice.

These tools are important building blocks for long form and also a great way to vary your short form work.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Tony Beeman has been improvising, teaching, and directing in Seattle for over ten years. He makes his improv home at Unexpected Productions, where he serves as Artistic Associate, and teaches the Performance 600 class. He performs regularly with Seattle Experimental Theater (Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Doctor, Time’s Arrow). He is a founding member of NERDProv, Seattle’s geekiest improv group, and can be seen on HyperRPG’s Shadowrun Twitch Show, Corporate SINs. He likes to watch characters fall in love more than anything.

Time’s Arrow: Behind the Scenes with Christine Riippi

Time’s Arrow CLOSES this weekend – see it Oct 20, 21 and 22 at 8PM at the Ballard Underground in Seattle. Tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets.

Christine Riippi first performed with Seattle Experimental Theater in the cast of 2013’s “Wedding Horror Stories”, followed by “The Wolf and the Witch” (2014/2015). She is now appearing in Time’s Arrow through October 22, and shared her thoughts below on the experience and the show through her mother’s eyes.

“My Mom Liked It!” by Christine Riippi

A couple months ago, I saw an audition posting for Seattle Experimental Theater’s newest show, “Time’s Arrow”. Along with the usual time, date, and contact information, there was a brief description of the show: “The spaces around us are full of history and potential; haunted by ghosts and gilded by dreams. Halls and streets and fields are rich with meaning defined by wonderful, terrible, forgettable, and sublime individual and collective experiences, yet we exist in them for only one moment at a time.” Well, that sounded incredibly interesting, intense, and slightly wacky. And like nothing I had ever seen on stage, especially in an improvised show. So I signed up and hoped to find out a little more about this mysterious “Time’s Arrow”.

Fast forward to Opening Night. My mom was to attend and I was explaining the premise of the show to her as we carpooled to the Ballard Underground. As a dedicated supporter of my improv habit, she has been to her share of shows where the performers do not memorize lines. Not every show has stuck the landing (“It was fun, but I liked ‘Wicked’ – remember ‘Wicked’? She flew!”), and now know to brief her before each show so she will know what to expect.

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Christine Riippi (L) and Sarah Scheller (R) in SET’s world premiere production of “Time’s Arrow”.

“So it’s a time travel show?” she asked.
“Sort of,” I answered, “But more like time-hopping. There’s no time machine or anything like that.”
“And you stay in the same place?”
“Yeah, we show big moments and events that happen in the same space, but it’s at any point in time. They might overlap, but they might not. So you could see when the place was built, or when it burned down, or when the space aliens invaded in the year 3046.”
“And you make it up as you go?” (A classic question, familiar to any improviser.)
“Yup!”

I do not know if my explanation was satisfactory or if it just confused her more. But this is improv; I have no idea what it is going to be “about” until we are in it. Luckily, the show went off without a hitch. The audience did not leave and nobody threw perishables at the performers, so I counted it as a win. When I found my mom after the show, I asked, “What’d you think?” Her answer delighted me: “That was one of the best shows I’ve seen!”

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. I am her daughter and she loves me and wouldn’t tell me anything other than good things. Maybe you’re right. But then she went on to compliment specific moments in the show and characters she liked, plus shared her ideas on what she thought might have happened in the location during the specific time periods we didn’t portray in the show. She even added, “I’m going to come back next weekend – I want to suggest the place!”

For the remainder of the weekend we enjoyed lovely audiences, including a group of fearless souls who braved Seattle’s Storm of the Century on Saturday night. Over the course of three days, we explored a parsonage in the Cayman Islands, the original tasting room at the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Tennessee, and saw several versions of Seattle’s own Salty’s on Alki. We created moments of adventure, sadness, romance, terror, and even a little whimsy, all occurring throughout the life of the location.

This show is a reminder that we are merely a brief chapter in the story of the places around us. We are just passing through. After this weekend, the show will be closed, but it will exist in time as a part of the story of Seattle Experimental Theater and the Ballard Underground. Even after weeks of rehearsals and several performances, “Time’s Arrow” is still like nothing I have ever seen or participated in onstage. The best way to understand what we’re creating and doing up there, is to come by and see it. It is wonderfully original, not to mention entertaining. But don’t take my word for it. Just ask my mom. She’ll be there on Saturday night.

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AUDIENCE REVIEW: Time’s Arrow

Congratulations to the cast of Time’s Arrow for a successful opening weekend, even in the face of a tumultuous weather weekend! One of our audience members submitted a lovely review on Goldstar – check it out and then grab your tickets for this week’s final 3 performances at http://timesarrow.bpt.me/. Thursday-Saturday, Oct 20, 21, and 22 at 8PM in the Ballard Underground.

From Goldstar Reviewer:
Wasn’t sure what to expect … first time at improv theater. Plain stage with couple of boxes; wet bar with some good whiskeys and decent white wine with the white wine going for $3; decent chairs. OK by me.

Topic was a parsonage on the Grand Cayman Island (from a audience member suggestion) and then one hour of improv. Highlight was (must have googled Grand Cayman) skinny bespectacled Bartholomew courting the governor’s daughter in competition with a British sea captain (Grand Cayman is a British Protectorate) and finally disclosing his true identity as the notorious pirate Black Bart (real historical Caribbean Pirate) winning the girl in a swordfight.

Sorry you missed it with the theater 1/3 full (could have been the storm warning over Seattle) as this particular play will never be seen again.

But the creative minds are still there awaiting your suggestion for the evening’s theme. Suggest you attend this affordable delight.

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Gallery

PHOTOS: Time’s Arrow

This gallery contains 8 photos.

Production photos from Time’s Arrow (2016). People pass through. Spaces remain. A world premiere improvised play debuting Oct 13-22 at the Ballard Underground in Seattle. Tickets available at http://timesarrow.bpt.me

Time’s Arrow: Behind the Scenes with Tony Beeman

Tony Beeman is a SET veteran (The Doctor, Where No Man Has Gone Before) who rejoins us in the cast of Time’s Arrow. Below, he shares his thoughts on being a part of this truly unique world premiere production.

Time’s Arrow runs October 13 – 22 at the Ballard Underground – 6 performances only. Get tickets now at http://timesarrow.bpt.me today!

I grew up in East Tennessee, along the Clinch River, where the earth would give up a lot of arrowheads each spring. A friend of the family gave me one of those arrowheads: a quartz arrowhead from the banks of the river, crafted by unknown tribes which had populated the area long before the Shawnee or Cherokee. I remember holding the chipped quartz in my ten-year-old hand and imagining the men and women who must have stood exactly where I was standing all those years ago. How they stood, what they wore, what they were doing. Who they loved. How they lived and how they died.

Time’s Arrow, created by director Elizabeth Brammer, and produced by Seattle Experimental Theater, is a show about an arrow of another sort. It opens this Thursday, and of the hundred-some shows I’ve performed in, it’s already among my favorites. The show explores a fixed place on Earth, while jumping through time. In 1972, a teenager storms out of the dining room, and collapses into a chair that stands where we just watched a 1790’s settler bury her own daughter. In 2173, our descendants argue water as dust sweeps across the landscape. In 1870, two conferderate deserters plan a doomed heist as they hide away in the settler’s now-abandoned shack.

Tony Beeman and Sarah Scheller at tech rehearsal for "Time's Arrow".

Tony Beeman and Sarah Scheller at tech rehearsal for “Time’s Arrow”.

We are surrounded by the ghosts of what has been and what will be. And while the characters are unable to break out of that arrow’s path, the audience escapes that velocity, and witnesses the past, present and future simultanously. It’s a sometimes funny, sometimes sad love song to places, with the dusty smell of old bookstores, the lit spark of future possibilities, and the comfortable air of a present that keeps slipping away. We’ve had a great time rehearsing the show, and are incredibly excited to invite an audience to participate in the journey!

Time’s Arrow opens Thursday, October 13th, and plays for two weeks on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at the Ballard Underground. Advance tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets.

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